Cantate’s 2026–2027 Concert Season
Welcome to Uncharted, Cantate’s season of seeking.
Here, beloved choral classics and moving modern works, haunting a cappella strains, primal percussion, and enveloping orchestras guide our exploration of the unknown passages between brokenness and healing, exile and reconciliation, division and unity.
Join us on the journey.
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OR EXPLORE INDIVIDUAL CONCERTS BELOW:
Mass in Exile
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026 | 5:00 P.M.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville
100 Welsh Park Dr, Rockville, MD 20850
Evocative strains of acoustic guitar and echoes of gregorian chant bind together two profound contemporary explorations of reconciliation in Cantate Chamber Singers’ season-opening concert. Jeffrey Van’s A Procession Winding Around Me depicts the anxious anticipation, violent destruction, horrific carnage, and healing in Walt Whitman’s compassionate civil war poems, while Mass in Exile, by composer Mark Buller expresses with deep personal intensity what librettist Leah Lax terms “our mutual struggle toward a new kind of faith within this broken world.”
Featuring baritone Carl DuPont.
GLORIA!
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2026 | 5:00 P.M.
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
6601 Bradley Boulevard, Bethesda, MD 20817
Nothing embodies the joy of the holiday season quite like Vivaldi’s ebullient Gloria, the ecstatic centerpiece of Cantate Concert Choir’s December concert. Joined by a chamber orchestra, our symphonic choir transports and uplifts with a program that also includes Francesco Durante’s Magnificat, complemented by contemporary celebrations of the season by John Rutter, Eric Whitacre, and Ola Gjeilo to inspire wonder and hope.
Featuring soprano Amy Broadbent and mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wòr
TIMELESS
SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2027 | 5:00 P.M.
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church
4900 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
An evening with Cantate Chamber Singers resonates with the timeless echoes of ancient traditions. Trevor Weston’s Messe Ancienne transports the sonority of medieval chant into the modern day with thrilling harmonies, while his Ma’at Musings interpret Egyptian pyramid texts with the help of atmospheric percussion. I Hate and I Love by Dominick Argento explores the perennial close connections between hate and love apparent even in early Roman writings.
MISERERE/ILLUMINARE
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2027 | 5:00 P.M.
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
6601 Bradley Boulevard, Bethesda, MD 20817
Cantate Concert Choir turns toward the light in a dramatic double-bill featuring an unconventional instrumental ensemble that challenges and transcends tradition. Michael Kurth’s Miserere embraces a “modern-primitive-sacred-spooky” style, alternating texts from Psalms and Lamentations with visceral modern poems. Elaine Hagenberg’s Illuminare offers a balm, as in her cinematic style, “Light gradually returns, hope is restored, illuminating our future and guiding us in peace.”
Featuring mezzo-soprano Cara Schaefer
THE WOUND IN THE WATER
SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2027 | 5:00 P.M.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville
100 Welsh Park Dr, Rockville, MD 20850
Together with a chamber ensemble, Cantate Chamber Singers invites you on an expansive musical and emotional journey with Kim Andre Arnesen’s The Wound in the Water. The composer shares: “The Wound in the Water explores the theme of Mammon, the traditional symbol of the love of greed and money, by singing of our exile and the wounding of our world, of the beauty of the earth, and of the struggle of profoundly divided humanity…This work recognizes the long journey towards the healing that we have to undergo and ends with an attempt of a shared song.”
Featuring soprano Mandy Brown.
A GERMAN REQUIEM
SATURDAY MAY 22, 2027 | 5:00 P.M.
Church of the Epiphany
1317 G St NW, Washington DC 20005
Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem is unlike any requiem before it. The composer set aside the mass for the dead and its day of wrath and chose instead words of comfort: Blessed are they that mourn. How lovely is thy dwelling place. I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice. It is a requiem for the living — music written to hold a grieving world and help it rise again. For our season finale, over one hundred musicians from Capital City Symphony and Cantate join together in this monumental, healing masterwork. This is where the entire season has been leading all along – a moment to find each other, share comfort, and rise together as one. Bring someone you love.
Featuring soprano Teresa Ferrara Blessing and baritone Jim Williams
Cantate seeks to maintain an equitable, safe and welcoming environment for all who participate in its various activities and functions, both in-person and virtually. We welcome musicians and volunteers of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and creeds, and strive to create an inclusive and creatively stimulating community. Therefore, discrimination and harassment of any nature will not be tolerated.